Thursday, December 31, 2009

At the end of each month we want to give you a 'heads up' of the books that will be used in the two upcoming months for several of our features: Little Books for Little Cooks, Now I Know My ABC's, and Once Upon a Book. These lists are to help you out so you can be looking for the books at your library, digging through your stacks in search of them, or order those 'must haves'!

Here are the books that we are planning to use during the months of January and February:

Friday, December 18, 2009

UptoTen.com is a site that has over 1,300 free games for children ~ mazes, puzzles, coloring pages, songs, stories and more. While some of them are geared toward older children, there are more than a few that can be played with your little one!

Image copyright UptoTen.com

A neat feature of the site is the Boowa & Kwala ‘First Clicks’ tutorials. The ‘First Clicks’ lessons guide your child through different basic keyboard lessons that gradually build up in difficulty ~ things like mouse rollover, click and action, or click and color. Depending on your child’s computer abilities, he can learn some basic skills here through fun and simple games and activities.

Image copyright UptoTen.com

If you are searching for a particular type of game or if you want to focus on a specific educational category, the search pages are handy! You can type in a question, or choose the category you are hunting for to find a game targeted to that area.

Image copyright UptoTen.com

Once you decide on the category you are looking for, your search results are sorted by the title/description, category, age range, site popularity, and also provides the skills that the activity will focus on {memory, listening, observation, understanding, oral expression, etc…}.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Summary: Join Mary, Joseph, the Shepherds, and the angels as they celebrate the birth of Jesus in this charming book and CD set. The wonderful original song follows the story word-for-word so young readers can sing along with each page on their own.

Monday, December 14, 2009

We are pleased to have the new 2010 writing team finalized and are really excited to reveal the new moms on board! Please join us (the existing team members) in welcoming the following new ladies to the Totally Tots team…

You will see their bios and also updated bios from our current team members coming soon!

We are also excited to share some new features coming your way in January…

From Tots to Teens

Biblically based parenting

Mommy Made Printables

a collection of printables made by moms focused on our monthly theme

Play with Me

ideas for playing with a specific open-ended toy of the month

Little Books for Little Cooks

tots in the kitchen with mom

A few existing features have undergone a bit of a makeover, you’ll see the changes soon! We have done a lot of work, taken your input, and tried to make some changes that will serve moms of tots even better this upcoming year! Stay tuned!

Friday, December 11, 2009

Fifi and the Flowertots is a show that is available to view on Sprout. The show features characters that look like flowers and follows their activities in their organic garden {the creator of this series also developed Bob the Builder}.

The site has some cute games that are simple for little ones to activate and use.

~ Hide and Seek just requires a touch of the space bar to uncover the hidden characters.

~ Jigsaw puzzles help your little one learn how to control the mouse with drop/drag

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Summary: Why do we celebrate Christmas each year? The Bible explains it--the answer is clear. Young children will discover the most important gift of all through charming rhyme and meaningful pictures.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

This is another of the special seasonal verses from Songs for Saplings. We will be leaving this verse up throughout the rest of the season, so there will be no new In My Heart verses until January! Merry Christmas!

Trace and cut an uppercase 'E' out of the foam sheet or construction paper. I used a foam sheet that was about 4" x 5" in size. Since our craft store didn't have gray foam, I used white and we painted it gray after we had glued it all together.

Using the extra foam, cut out an ear and a trunk for the elephant. I used a little sliver of our white foam to also cut out a tusk for him.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Cute Tots is a fun and simple way of sharing our Mommy blogs and Cute Tots with each other! We will be keeping this feature for 2010, but only posting it on the 5th Tuesday of months that have 5 Tuesdays {April, July, September, December}. We would love to showcase your tots for this feature, as a fun way to share our blogs with each other.

Do you have a tot-friendly Christmas or winter craft on your blog? Read here first and then email me (EricaAtTotallyTots@gmail (dot) com) so I can add it here! If you feature crafts on your blog often, be sure to let me know in the email so I can add you to the "search" list for future posts!

~Welcome to Erica, one of our new team members! She will be officially introduced soon, but she jumped right in and helped us out with this post for December! Be sure to click her name tag to visit her awesome personal blog!!